Guantanamo Often Held the Wrong Men

The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot
to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention
camp.

They shouted "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - as one of them hefted a metal
mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick
streams of blood running down his face.

American troops dragged Akhtiar out of his home in Gardez, Afghanistan, in
May 2003, flew him to Guantanamo in shackles that July and held him there
for more than three years. . . .

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents
has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens and perhaps hundreds of men whom
the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the
basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty
payments. . . .

From the moment that Guantanamo opened in early 2002, former Secretary of
the Army Thomas White said, it was obvious that at least a third of the
population didn't belong there. . . .

Bush suspended the legal protection for detainees spelled out in Common
Article Three of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which
outlaws degrading treatment and torture. . . .